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A new and challenging entry into the debates between feminism and postmodernism, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism challenges some basic preconceptions about the role of political theory today. Sargisson explores current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction. Utopian thinking is offered as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. This book provides an exploration of, and exercise in, utopian thought.
A new and challenging entry into the debates between feminism and postmodernism, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism challenges some basic preconceptions about the role of political theory today. Sargisson explores current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction. Utopian thinking is offered as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. This book provides an exploration of, and exercise in, utopian thought.
Contemporary Feminist Utopianismis a stimulating, original and accessible survey of some of the more complex strands of contemporary thought. Exploring current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction, Lucy Sargisson argues for utopianism as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. The author rejects approaches to utopianism which insist upon utopia as a perfect blueprint for the future. Instead, she identifies a new transgressive utopianism which destroys old certainties in favor of a new and more unsettling vision of a feminist future. This utopianism stresses process over product and is informed by contemporary poststructuralist theories of language. Such a utopianism resists closure, negating and destroying the dualistic system of thought she argues underpins the western tradition.
What do we want? What do we believe to be wrong with the world? How can we best change it? How should we live? Given the world as it is, how can we best achieve our dreams and desires? Utopian Bodies is, quite simply, a new approach to thinking about theory. Using the dominant themes of green and feminist politics, this fascinating and original text creates a new notion of utopian thought and life - "transgressive utopianism". This new concept is not a blueprint for an ideal polity; instead it demonstrates an approach to the world that is both idealistic and pragmatic, focussing on bodies of thought in relation to bodies of people: communities. Also spanning philosophy, political theory and deconstruction, this book is especially relevant today as the millennium marks a time of resurgence in utopian studies
Looks at feminist science fiction in the context of utopian thought. The term utopia implies both "good place" and "nowhere". Since Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, debates about utopian models of society have sought to understand the implications of these somewhat contradictory definitions. In Notes on Nowhere, Jennifer Burwell uses contemporary feminist science fiction to examine the political and literary meaning of utopian writing and thought. Burwell provides close readings of the science fiction of five feminist writers -- Marge Piercy, Sally Gearhart, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Monique Wittig -- and poses questions central to utopian writing: Do these texts promote a tradition in which narratives of the ideal society have been used to hide rather than reveal violence, oppression, and social divisions? Can a feminist critical utopia offer a departure from this tradition by exposing contradiction and struggle as central aspects of the utopian impulse? What implications do these questions have for those who wish to retain the utopian impulse for emancipatory political uses? Notes on Nowhere makes an original, significant, and persuasive contribution to our understanding of the political and literary dimensions of the utopian impulse in literature and social theory.
This collection speaks to common themes and strategies in women's writing about their different worlds, from Margaret Cavendish's seventeenth-century Blazing World of the North Pole to the "men-less" islands of the French writer Scudery to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century utopias of Shelley and Gaskell, and science fiction pulps, finishing with the more contemporary feminist fictions of Le Guin, Wittig, Piercy, and Michison. It shows that these fictions historically speak to each other and together amount to a literary tradition of women's writing about a better place.
This “incredible addition to the feminist canon” brings together the most inspiring, creative, and courageous voices concerning modern women’s issues (Jessica Valenti, editor of Yes Means Yes). In this groundbreaking collection, more than fifty cutting-edge feminist writers—including Melissa Harris-Perry, Janet Mock, Sheila Heti, and Mia McKenzie—invite us to imagine a world of freedom and equality in which: An abortion provider reinvents birth control . . . The economy values domestic work . . . A teenage rock band dreams up a new way to make music . . . The Constitution is re-written with women’s rights at the fore . . . The standard for good sex is raised with a woman’s pleasure in mind . . . The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given, “offering playful, earnest, challenging, and hopeful versions of our collective future in the form of creative nonfiction, fiction, visual art, poetry, and more” (Library Journal).
Many feminists love a utopia—the idea of restarting humanity from scratch or transforming human nature in order to achieve a prescribed future based on feminist visions. Some scholars argue that feminist utopian fiction can be used as a template for creating such a future. However, Sally L. Kitch argues that associating feminist thought with utopianism is a mistake. Drawing on the history of utopian thought, as well as on her own research on utopian communities, Kitch defines utopian thinking, explores the pitfalls of pursuing social change based on utopian ideas, and argues for a "higher ground" —a contrasting approach she calls realism. Replacing utopianism with realism helps to eliminate self-defeating notions in feminist theory, such as false generalization, idealization, and unnecessary dichotomies. Realistic thought, however, allows feminist theory to respond to changing circumstances, acknowledge sameness as well as difference, value the past and the present, and respect ideological give-and-take. An important critique of feminist thought, Kitch concludes with a clear, exciting vision for a feminist future without utopia.